I'm not much for "spirit events" - and I've never been in the Armed Forces - so don't take my lack of familiarity as disdain for the idea in general. I suppose a bunch of soldiers-in-training standing around a courtyard whamming each other with pillows could be fun. It's probably not the sort of thing that makes the Russians cower in fear, but then again maybe they watch it with envy because they only "spirit" in their army is the one of fear over being sent to the gulag if they screw something up. At any rate, the video is less than a minute long, and it gives you a sense of what goes - and also of what could happen if someone decides it would be a grand idea to hide a helmet inside the pillow they're swinging.
